Portuguese literature
da Administração Publica em Portugal nos seculos XII a XV_ (3 vols.,
1885, 96, 1914) has collected an abundance of concrete, carefully
verified details, and thrown a searching light on the early history of
Portugal.[682]
In literary criticism as well as in historical research the nineteenth
century worthily continued the traditions of the eighteenth. FRANCISCO
MARQUES DE SOUSA VITERBO (1845-1910) after first appearing in print
as a poet in _O Anjo do Pudor_ (1870) rendered excellent service in
both those fields; the best-known work of LUCIANO CORDEIRO (1844-1900)
is his study _Soror Marianna_ (1890); ZOPHIMO CONSIGLIERI PEDROSO
(1851-1910) and ANTONIO THOMAZ PIRES (†1913) were celebrated for their
studies in folk-lore[683]; the VISCONDE DE JUROMENHA (1807-87) for his
edition of the works of Camões; the CONDE DE FICALHO (1837-1903) for
several remarkable studies and his edition of Garcia da Orta; ANNIBAL
FERNANDES THOMAZ (1840-1912) as a bibliographer; AUGUSTO EPIPHANIO DA
SILVA DIAS (1841-1916) as scholar and critic; JOSÉ PEREIRA DE SAMPAIO
(1857-1915), who used the pseudonym _Bruno_, as a critic; ANICETO DOS
REIS GONÇALVEZ VIANA (1840-1914) and JULIO MOREIRA (1854-1911) as
philologists; LUIZ GARRIDO (1841-82) as critic and classical scholar in
his _Ensaios historicos e criticos_ (1871) and _Estudos de historia e
litteratura_ (1879). After the death of the diligent and enthusiastic
but sadly unmethodical bibliographer INNOCENCIO DA SILVA (1810-76),
his celebrated _Diccionario Bibliographico Portuguez_ was carried on
by BRITO ARANHA (1833-1914), and the task of continuing it is now
entrusted to Snr. GOMES DE BRITO. To the eminent folk-lorist FRANCISCO
ADOLPHO COELHO (1847-1919) the language, literature, and folklore
are indebted for many works of permanent value. Notable among living
scholars, apart from D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos and Mr.
Edgar Prestage, who both write in Portuguese, are Colonel FRANCISCO
MARIA ESTEVES PEREIRA, whose editions of early works are invaluable;
Dr. JOSÉ JOAQUIM NUNES, who has devoted his careful scholarship to the
early poetry and prose; the Camões scholar, Dr. JOSÉ MARIA RODRIGUES;
Snr. PEDRO DE AZEVEDO, archaeologist and historian; Snr. DAVID LOPES,
a scholar equally versed in literature and history; Snr. CANDIDO DE
FIGUEIREDO (born in 1846), enthusiastic student and exponent of the
Portuguese language; while Dr. FIDELINO DE FIGUEIREDO has a wide
and growing reputation as critic and as editor of the _Revista de
Historia_. Snr. ANSELMO BRAAMCAMP FREIRE (born in 1849), founder and
editor of the _Archivo Historico Portugues_ and a most sagacious critic
and keen investigator, is the author of attractive and important
historical studies and editions, which have become more frequent since
he has been able to spare more time from public affairs. Dr. JOSÉ
LEITE DE VASCONCELLOS (born in 1858) has a European reputation as
archaeologist, folk-lorist, philologist, and founder and editor of
the _Revista Lusitana_. Ethnology, numismatics, and poetry are among
his other subjects, and he maintains the renown of the Portuguese as
polyglots, since he writes in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Latin,
and Galician. His untiring enthusiasm for all that is popular or
genuinely Portuguese is reflected in his numerous books and pamphlets,
and he happily infects younger scholars. The gift and training of
exact scholarship were denied to Dr. THEOPHILO BRAGA (born in 1843),
but his exceptional ardour, industry, and ingenuity have been of
inestimable value to Portuguese literature, which will always venerate
his name even though his works perish. More than thirty years ago they
numbered over sixty, and that was, as it were, only a beginning. His
volumes of verse, _Folhas Verdes_ (1859), _Visão dos Tempos_ (1864),
_Tempestades Sonoras_ (1864), _Ondina do Lago_ (1866), _Torrentes_
(1869), _Miragens Seculares_ (1884), which was intended to succeed
where Victor Hugo’s _Légende des Siècles_ had failed through lack of a
_plano fundamental_, have been variously judged, some regarding them as
real works of genius, others as a step removed from the sublime; his
works on the Portuguese people are always full of interesting matter.
His important _Historia da Litteratura Portuguesa_ was to have been
completed in thirty-two volumes, but his energies have been spent in
many directions, and he has further written works of history, including
that of Coimbra University in four volumes, positivist philosophy, and
sociology, as well as short stories and plays.
The Portuguese novelists in the nineteenth century showed an increasing
tendency to write plays, while authors whose reputation belonged more
exclusively to the drama rarely rose above mediocrity. The success
of Garrett’s plays was bound to fire a crowd of dramatists. Gomes de
Amorim’s _Ghigi_ (1852), on a fifteenth-century theme, was followed by
plays with a thesis, such as _A Viuva_ (1852), _Odio de Raça_ (1854),
written on the slavery question at Garrett’s request, and _Figados de
Tigre_ (1857), which entitles itself a parody of melodramas. Having
emigrated as a boy to Brazil, he was able to use his knowledge of South
America, sometimes with more zeal than discretion, as in _O Cedro
Vermelho_, an exotic play in five acts and seventy-nine scenes, which
the unfamiliar dresses and hybrid dialogue helped to make popular at
Lisbon.[684]
The notable success of more recent playwrights has perhaps developed
in proportion as the drama has ceased to be drama in order to become
a series of isolated scenes, a novel or _conto_ in green-room attire.
They are at their happiest when they abandon formal drama for the
lighter _revista_. Pathos is theirs and a deft handling of social
themes; they can reproduce the peasant or _bourgeois_ or noble as a
class in thought and action and external conditions. Some of them
possess technical skill, choose indigenous subjects and an atmosphere
of chastened romanticism. But individual psychology and dramatic
action are scarcely to be found. A reader with the patience to peruse
the hundreds of plays acted and published in Lisbon during the last
fifty years would be rewarded by many delicate half-tones, polished
and impeccable verse, excellent prose, admirable sentiments, and
poignant scenes, but could with difficulty afterwards recall a striking
character or situation. FERNANDO CALDEIRA (1841-94) was a poet,
and his plays, _O Sapatinho de Setim, A Mantilha de Renda_ (1880),
_Nadadoras, A Madrugada_ (1894), are read less for the plot than for
his carefully limned verse. His volume of poems, _Mocidades_, appeared
in 1882. ANTONIO ENNES (1848-1901), journalist, librarian, politician,
diplomatist, Minister of Marine, showed command of pathos and humour
as well as of style in his plays _O Saltimbanco_ (1885), the tragedy
of the noble devotion of a mountebank, Falla-Só, descendant of Jean
Valjean, for his daughter, who has been brought up in ignorance of
her birth, _Os Lazaristas_ (1875), and _Os Engeitados_ (1876), which
insists throughout on its thesis, the wickedness and cruelty of
exposing children, but has some good scenes and living characters,
and the notable one-act piece _Um Divorcio_ (1877). The principal
play of MAXIMILIANO DE AZEVEDO (1850-1911), author of many light and
commonplace comedies, as _Por Força_ (1900), was the drama _Ignez de
Castro_ (1894). The scene in which Inés, full of foreboding, takes
leave of Pedro before he goes hunting, and that at the end of Act IV,
in which Pedro returns to find Inés, in the words of their little son,
_ali a dormir_, are effective. A fifth act six years later [1361]
comes as an anti-climax. _O Auto dos Esquecidos_ (1898) is the work
not of a dramatist but of a poet, JOSÉ DE SOUSA MONTEIRO (1846-1909),
whose poems were published under the title _Poemas: Mysticos, Antigos,
Modernos_ (1883). The _auto_, written in the old _redondilhas_
of which another modern poet has sung the praises, necessarily
suffers by comparison with plays in which Gil Vicente touched
upon the subject--the humbler forgotten heroes of the Portuguese
discoveries--but it has its own charm and pathos.
But the most noteworthy of the dramatists of the latter part of the
century was D. JOÃO DA CAMARA (1852-1908), son of the first Marques
and eighth Conde da Ribeira Grande and grandson of the third Duque
de Lafões. He early began writing for the stage one-act pieces such
as _Nobreza_ (1873). His work is various, for it includes elaborate
historical dramas in heroic couplets, as _Affonso VI_ (1890), in
which the king is treated with a sympathy denied to Cardinal Henrique
in _Alcacer-Kibir_ (1891), slight pieces in verse, as _O Poeta e
a Saudade_ or the _Auto do Menino Jesus_ (1903); and prose plays
of contemporary Lisbon society: _O Pantano_ (a series of scenes of
madness and murder), _A Rosa Engeitada_, _A Toutinegra Real_, _A Triste
Viuvinha_, _Casamento e Mortalha_. In these he is lifelike and natural,
but many may prefer him in his more fanciful pieces, portraying the
old Canon who lives up under the roof of Lisbon Cathedral, in _Meia
Noite_ (1900), or the _prior_ and other rustic worthies of Alentejo,
in _Os Velhos_ (1893), or the ancient mariner of _O Beijo do Infante_
(1898). The mad José of _O Pantano_, the scatterbrained Clytemnestra
in _A Toutinegra Real_, the _parvenu_ Arroiolos and select Dona
Placida in _A Rosa Engeitada_ give little idea of the essential mellow
humanity of his work, enhanced by a prose style carefully chosen
and at times slightly archaic. Snr. Abel Botelho is more peculiarly
concerned with the novel, and his plays _Germano_ (1886), _Os Vencidos
da Vida_ (1892), _Jucunda_ (1895) derive their interest from the
description of certain phases of Lisbon life which could have been
presented equally well in novel form. MARCELLINO MESQUITA (1856-1919),
doctor and deputy, wrote historical dramas, _O Regente_ [1440] in
prose, _Leonor Telles_ (1889, published in 1893) in verse, _O Sonho
da India_ (1898) (scenes from the discoveries of Gama and ten other
famous Portuguese navigators), and _Pedro O Cruel_ (1916). If these
historical tragedies are somewhat ponderous, he has a lighter touch in
the _redondilhas_ of _Margarida do Monte_ (1910) and in the charming
sketch _Peraltas e Secias_, and displays psychological insight in prose
plays dealing with more modern problems: the comedy _Perola_ (1889),
_Os Castros_ (1893), _O Velho Thema_ (1896), _Sempre Noiva_ (1900),
_Almas Doentes_ (1905), which treats of hereditary madness and suicide,
and in the moving tragedy _Envelhecer_ (1909), although it is perhaps
out of keeping with the finely portrayed character of Eduardo de
Mello that he should so end who had endured so nobly. His prose style
has great merit (a few words require excision, e. g. _restaurante_,
_rewolver_, _desconforto_), and he wrote many shorter problem pieces
or episodes in prose: _Fim de Penitencia_ (1895), _O Auto do Busto_
(1899), _O Tio Pedro_ (1902), _A Noite do Calvario, A Mentira_ (in
which a wife lies to her husband by the life of their child, who
dies). The monotony of the rhymed couplets in _Leonor Telles_ is
intensified in the work of Snr. HENRIQUE LOPES DE MENDONÇA (born in
1856). His verse is more declamatory, the use of strained _esdruxulo_
endings is carried so far that it becomes a mannerism and the verse
often resembles a hurdle-race, the line running on smoothly to the
obstacle at its end (_thalamo_--_cala-m’o_; _silencio_--_recompense-o_;
_phantasma_--_faz-m’a_). This no doubt helps to increase the effect
of hollow resonance. Nor is there a compensating skill in psychology.
There is nothing subtle, for instance, in the characters of _O Duque
de Vizeu_ (1886): the cruel João II, the timid Manuel, the high-minded